A hydraulic empire (also known as a hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.[1]

Often associated with these terms and concepts is the notion of a water dynasty. This body is a political structure which is commonly characterized by a system of hierarchy and control often based on class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, water, energy) and a means of enforcement such as the military are vital for the maintenance of control.

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A developed hydraulic civilization maintains control over its population by means of controlling the supply of water. The term was coined by the German American historian Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988), in his book Oriental Despotism (1957). Wittfogel asserted that such "hydraulic civilizations" — although they were neither all located in the Orient nor characteristic of all Oriental societies — were essentially different from those of the Western world.

Most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient Somalia, Sri Lanka, Mesopotamia, China and pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, are believed to have been hydraulic empires.[citation needed] The Indus Valley civilization is often considered a hydraulic empire despite a lack of evidence of irrigation (as this evidence may have been lost in time due to flood damage).[citation needed] Most hydraulic empires existed in desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation.

Wittfogel argues that climate caused some parts of the world to develop higher levels of civilization than others. He is known for claiming that climate in the Orient led to despotic rule. This environmental determinism comes to bear when considering that in those societies where the most control was exhibited, this was commonly the case due to the central role of the resource in economic processes and its environmentally limited, or constrained nature. This made controlling supply and demand easier and allowed a more complete monopoly to be established, as well as preventing the use of alternative resources to compensate. However, Diamond points out that complex irrigation projects predated states in Madagascar, Mexico, China and Mesopotamia.

The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel's thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy – in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government. Popular revolution in such a state was impossible: a dynasty might die out or be overthrown by force, but the new regime would differ very little from the old one. Hydraulic empires were only ever destroyed by foreign conquerors.[citation needed]

Wittfogel's ideas, when applied to China, have been harshly criticized by scholars such as Joseph Needham who argued essentially that Wittfogel was operating from ignorance of basic Chinese history. Needham argued that the Chinese government was not despotic, was not dominated by a priesthood, had lots of peasant rebellions, and that Wittfogel's perspective does not address the necessity and presence of bureaucracy in modern Western civilization.[citation needed]Robert L. Carneiro was also critical of Wittfogel's theory, writing in Science in August 1970: "This theory has recently run into difficulties. Archeological evidence now makes it appear that in at least three of the areas that Wittfogel cites as exemplifying his ‘hydraulic hypothesis’ — Mesopotamia, China, and Mexico — full-fledged states developed well before large-scale irrigation".[3] With regard to Mesopotamia, Carneiro cited Robert McCormick Adams, Jr., who had concluded: "In short, there is nothing to suggest that the rise of dynastic authority in southern Mesopotamia was linked to the administrative requirements of a major canal system."[3][4] On China, which Carneiro called "the prototypical area for Wittfogel’s hydraulic theories", he quoted Jacques Gernet who had recently written: “although the establishment of a system of regulation of water courses and irrigation, and the control of this system, may have affected the political constitution of the military states and imperial China, the fact remains that, historically, it was the pre-existing state structures and the large, well-trained labour force provided by the armies that made the great irrigation projects possible”.[3][5] Turning to Mexico, Carneiro wrote: “large-scale irrigation systems do not appear to antedate the Classic period, whereas it is clear that the first states arose in the preceding Formative or Pre-Classic period”.[3] Of hydraulic empires generally, Carneiro commented: "This is not to say, of course, that large-scale irrigation, where it occurred, did not contribute significantly to increasing the power and scope of the state. It unquestionably did. To the extent that Wittfogel limits himself to this contention, I have no quarrel with him whatever. However, the point at issue is not how the state increased its power but how it arose in the first place. And to this issue the hydraulic hypothesis does not appear to hold the key."[3]

The same elements of resource control central to hydraulic empire were also central to Europe's colonization of much of the global South. Colonies were resource rich areas located on the periphery, and the contemporary models of core-periphery interaction were focused on the extraction and control of these resources for the use of the core.[6] This was accomplished through a type of agro-managerial despotism with close connections to debates around hydraulic empire.

The protagonist in Larry Niven's A World Out of Time (1976) describes the concept of a water-monopoly empire to the antagonist. This becomes a major plot point. In his book Destiny's Road (1998), potassium (a trace nutrient) takes the place of water.[citation needed]

In the Dune science fiction series, created by Frank Herbert, water is a source of power and contention on the desert planet Arrakis. More importantly, a drug called melange, found only on that planet, is the key commodity in interplanetary commerce. This makes whoever controls Arrakis ruler of a hydraulic empire consisting of the entire known universe. At many places in the books some variant of the following is said of melange: "He who controls it, controls our destiny."

One of the faction leaders of Fallout: New Vegas, Mr. House, holds a grip over another faction, the New California Republic, with a one-sided deal where the NCR maintains and protects Hoover Dam while he gets more than enough free energy and water to maintain New Vegas.

The cult-leader Immortan Joe from Mad Max: Fury Road has monopolized fresh water resources extracted from deep underground, using it as a mechanism of control and for hydroponic agriculture in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Episode 5 Season #3 (1968) of Mission Impossible television series Mission Impossible "The Execution", The Impossible Mission Force must stop a gangster from taking over the food distribution throughout the United States.

^Carl Hermann Kraeling; Robert M. Adams, eds. (1960). City Invincible: A Symposium on Urbanization and Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East. Held at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, December 4-7, 1958. University of Chicago Press. p. 281. ASINB000OYXA5E.